


Blue, The Reaper

by kiiouex



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Gen, POV Second Person, Willful Misinterpretation of Tarot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-11
Updated: 2016-03-11
Packaged: 2018-05-26 02:10:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6219535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiiouex/pseuds/kiiouex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You’ve named it ‘The Raven’s Demise’ and it is a masterpiece. Every single card is death. You let yourself loose with salvaged card stock and Indian ink, and created seventy-eight wild, savage depictions of men disappearing into all-consuming darkness. As much as possible, the men resemble Aglionby boys.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blue, The Reaper

**Author's Note:**

> this was _incredibly funny_ when me and [tk](http://archiveofourown.org/users/telekinesiskid) were tossing it around, so I _sure do hope_ it's still funny now ':^)

You made the deck yourself. One month ago, Aglionby issued the invitations to Henrietta business owners who wanted a stall at their gala, and the deck has been your weekend project since you accepted on 300 Fox Way’s behalf. It is, without exaggerating, the greatest thing you have ever created.

You’ve named it ‘The Raven’s Demise’ and it is a masterpiece. Every single card is death. You let yourself loose with salvaged card stock and Indian ink, and created seventy-eight wild, savage depictions of men disappearing into all-consuming darkness. As much as possible, the men resemble Aglionby boys.

You sit in ‘witchy’ black, wedged in between a homemade soap stall and a fudge stall, your table draped in Persephone’s favourite violet throw, and you tolerate the obvious stares and snickers that you draw from the student body. For five dollars a reading, you draw one card from the deck, and present an Aglionby boy with his fate. You would probably be happy to draw from _this_ deck for free, but five dollars a reading means that you are having the most incredible morning of your life.

“What’s this?” boys ask, strolling past in groups of two or three or eight. “A witch? _Spooky_.” They laugh, and you smile, feeling the tight corners of your eyes and finding everything so much more tolerable knowing what’s to come.

You ask, “Would you like a reading? Only five dollars,” and they accept like you said five cents. They chortle and elbow each other for being stupid enough to try, and you offer the splayed out deck to the lead of whatever gilded pack has approached. The loosely blotted backings of the cards are murky ripples, eldritch warnings that Calla complimented you on and that these boys do not heed at all.

The lead dickhead will draw his card, and it will be death, and all his friends will crowd around to see. This is the point where it is very easy for them to laugh you off as ridiculous and walk away unperturbed, so this is the point where you have to do your absolute very best. Your eyes go wide. You clasp a hand to your mouth, let your fingers tremble over your lips. Or, you’ll try to snatch the card back, like you’re afraid it will burn them – that’s always good. The worse you look, the worse _they_ start to look.

You tell them, “So sorry, that shouldn’t be there,” or let your voice quaver as your mournfully wonder, “How..?” or you snap the cards back into a tight pile and say, “That shouldn’t happen.” You practiced in the mirror last night, to get your expression just right – fearful, intimidated, a hint of real awe as you glance down at the cards covered by your hands.

Some of them still write you off as small-minded and ridiculous, and you let them leave because at least you still have their money. Some say thank you, and glance over their shoulder as they leave, their friend’s chatter washing over them as their thoughts linger.

Some actually, wonderfully, get afraid. Either naturally fretful or trained to fear the supernatural, they will press two white-knuckled hands to your table and demand, “What did that mean, _death?_ What – _when_ am I going to die?”

“Forget about it,” you tell them, “draw another card.”

They draw. You have to try very hard not to laugh as well-moneyed faces go ever whiter in the face of a second, _different_ death card.

Sometimes you offer their friends a drawing too, when the whole group is superstitious enough to believe in you, and you flip three cards over in a row, revealing miserable, inky figures who could _very possibly_ be wearing Aglionby sweaters. “How many death cards are in one deck?” they enquire, manners just a little strained.

“The cards that you need find you,” you tell the boys, solemn, mournful. “I wouldn’t all get in a car together.”

You’re sure your mother will be deeply ashamed of you, but she’s not the one making enough to replace the microwave in one morning. Asking forgiveness instead of permission, and all that. You are going to be _very_ forgivable when you cart a new appliance home.

Eventually – and it probably had to happen, some kind of karma taking its revenge on you – a boy approaches with real, genuine interest shining in his eyes. Your heart sinks. “Hello,” he says brightly, teeth white enough for television, “ _delighted_ to meet you. I’m Gansey. I was absolutely thrilled to hear that there was someone doing readings here, even if you have been predicting rather untimely ends for most of my cohort.”

He speaks too smoothly, and it takes you a moment to parse. “You want a reading?”

“If you don’t mind,” he says, and he is the first person all day to actually read the ‘Readings: $5’ sign you put up and offer you a note without prompting. He’s lucky you saved your salary long enough that you can still break twenties, though most of his change comes in loose, dusty coins.

“What kind of spread do you do?” he asks, and you grimace, hearing the informed expectation in his tone. “Five dollars seems awfully cheap for a full reading.”

“It’s a single card drawing,” you tell him. Carefully, you stack up the Raven’s Demise and set it to one side. You did bring a real deck with you, fearing just this eventuality – someone who knows what they’re talking about, who might be an actual customer one day, who is probably aware that there are cards other than ‘death’ and may even be able to _name them_.

He eyes the new deck you lay out  - also illustrated by you, though several years ago, so the art now makes you wince – and asks, “Why not the other deck?”

“You’ve got a different energy,” you tell him, which isn’t quite a lie. “Draw a card.”

He slides a card from the spread-out deck towards him, dragging it to the very edge of the table before he flips it over. He looks at it for a long moment, and then turns it around to show you.

Fourteen year old Blue’s illustration of death stares back at you. Of course.

“Right,” you say, drawing in a breath and holding out a hand to take the card back. “Ignore that. Take another one.”

“Should I expect a different result?” he asks, voice a little wry, and you realise that news of your stall must have spread. You flush, and shake your hand more emphatically for the card, but he doesn’t let it go; instead he flips it back around to admire your shaky pencil work.

You’re trying to think of the right way to tell him that he shouldn’t have gotten death _this_ time when a small flock of raven boys gathers in around him: one sharp-edged and severe, one gentle but worn soft by fatigue, and one faded and smudgy. You realise with faint horror that you have given them all their ‘reading’ from the Raven’s Demise. You just couldn’t resist handing the sharp one a death card, and now they’re settling in around Gansey and seeing the future you set for him.

“I got death, too,” the smudgy boy says mildly. “She said the boy on the card looked like me.” You struggle to keep your face straight as Gansey looks at you in askance and sees clearly that yes, you did say it looked like him. One of the other boys sniggers.

“Here, we’ll try again,” you say, shaking your hand with insistence until he finally places the card in it. You shuffle the deck briskly and splay the cards out over your table, acutely aware that you haven’t been the right amount of theatrical to do a real reading in front of four raven boys.

Not that it matters. Gansey flips over death, and makes a sound that would be a thoughtful hum if not for the excruciating scepticism woven through it. You can’t help wincing, because of course he would get death _twice_ on his own, and then you realise he got death twice on his own which would be an _incredible_ co-incidence if you believed in those. You don’t.

“I wouldn’t worry,” the sharp one tells him. “Adam and I both got one of those. At the same time.”

Gansey’s eyebrows shoot up, and you take back every time you have cursed a raven boy for being ignorant. It would be so much easier to keep dealing with ignorance. Instead Gansey asks you, carefully polite, “How many death cards do you have?”

“Only one,” you say, defensive. You scoop up a handful of cards to show them that you do _have_ other arcana and it’s Gansey’s fault for not drawing them.

His elegant friend eyes the inky stack of Raven’s Demise on the side of your table and asks, “What about in the other deck?”

Your cheeks colour, and four sets of eyes take it in with interest. “There, uh,” you say, very slowly, “may be several more.”

The mean one leans in to take the deck, but you snatch it up before he can touch it. You set your chin as though you’re proud and not incredibly red, and flip the deck, splaying the cards out face-up. Seventy-eight different, dying Aglionby boys stare up at you. The mean one bursts out laughing, and Gansey’s mouth falls open. A second later he’s recovered, and stares at you with fervent admiration. “That,” he says, “must have been so much work.”

It is nice to have all your weekend labour acknowledged. “Thank you.”

“So.” He taps the back of the real deck, smooth blue watercolour sliding carelessly under his fingers. “This one _was_ real? I drew death twice organically? What are the odds?”

“About one in ten thousand,” his elegant friend murmurs.

“Death doesn’t always mean death. It doesn’t even _usually_ mean death,” you tell him, though you suspect that in his case, it may actually just mean death. “Look you should come by for a reading, one with an _actual_ psychic, so they can have a look at your impending – well. You should come by.” You have handmade business cards, much more pleasant and professional than your more artistic projects, and you press one into his hands.

He considers the card, turns it over like he can’t believe the _lack_ of death, and then returns to studying you. It is both flattering and horrifying to see that the delighted interest he’d first regarded you with hasn’t dampened at all. If anything, it’s intensified. “I think I will,” he says.

“You really don’t have to,” his mean friend tells him. “I think we all know exactly how it’s going to go. Look, _I’m_ psychic, I predict you’re going to walk out with a death card stapled to your forehead.”

Gansey ignores him to smile at you, which you appreciate. “I’ll come by,” he says, and leads his flock away. You watch them leave, and then they are replaced with a near identical set of boys who are somehow a thousand times less charming.

You haul a microwave home. Your mother and aunts are both drunk and delighted enough that they do a full Celtic Cross with the Raven’s Demise and spill an appalling amount of vodka.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you thought, and I also [tumblr](http://kiiouex.tumblr.com/)


End file.
